The best novels with beautifully drawn settings and characters that evoke mystery and a tinge of the supernatural

In Midwinter of the Spirit, Rickman’s excellent prose superbly evokes Herefordshire settings as a backdrop to his protagonist’s, (parish priest, rooky exorcist, and single mum Merrily Watkins), foray into a twilight world. Merrily’s character is painted by Rickman as vulnerable but driven, qualities that eventually lead her into mortal danger, with evil pursuing her in the most personal way through her daughter, and also manifesting itself at the heart of the religious establishment that should be her ultimate protector. Midwinter of the Spirit was subsequently made into an excellent TV serial, and the cathedral scenes were coincidentally filmed at Chester Cathedral, which features in my novel (and is where I was standing when the mug shot shown on this page was taken!). 

Hill’s minimalist style, ability to evoke despair, and superb descriptions, combined with the most vivid of imaginations, make her a compelling writer of ghost stories. In The Woman in Black, she paints the superbly gothic Eel Marsh House, and its bleak surroundings with a deft touch that transports the reader into the narrative. You don’t read a Susan Hill book to come out feeling better afterward, but… if you like to be left with a feeling of disquiet, even though you know it’s only a story you just read, The Woman in Black is definitely for you.

No writer evokes atmosphere better than Daphne Du Maurier, and this collection of five short stories demonstrates her gifts superbly. Best known of these short stories is "Don’t Look Now," a tale of bereavement and despair with a wicked twist at the end, set in Venice and subsequently made into a superb horror movie. But the other stories within this anthology also immerse the reader in their settings, with each delivering an unexpected twist. 

This best seller needs no introduction for most readers, and despite lacking originality and containing a number of inaccuracies masquerading as facts, is included on my list because Brown excels in several ways as a writer that I admire very much; he evokes settings really well, paints characters like protagonist Robert Langdon superbly, and is a master of the page-turner. You simply have to keep on reading a Dan Brown novel, you can’t put it down. I’m also including The Da Vinci Code here because there is some commonality between its plot and that of my latest novel, although The Da Vinci Code was never any kind of inspiration for my writing.

The undisputed master of the Occult thriller, Wheatley sold over 50 million books, regularly topping best seller lists in the mid-20th Century. In To The Devil a Daughter, Wheatley contrasts the colour of the post-war French Riviera with the greyness of ration-book 1940’s Britain with a rare vividness, and atypically for the time, creates a ‘kick-ass’ middle-aged female protagonist. His descriptions of the Essex marshes, and the sinister Canon Copely-Syle who lives there, are superb. In another book, The Haunting of Toby Jugg, Wheatley describes a school (loosely based on the infamous Dartington Hall school), that partly inspired ‘The Academy’ in my own book. When reading Wheatley’s books, bear in mind he was a man of his time, as many of his views do not date well. I was massively flattered recently when a reader of my book said my style (not my views!) reminded him of Wheatley’s.